SMS Marketing – An Overview for Modern-Day Marketers

Texting people about your products and services is a great approach to interact with potential customers. But what if your customers are ignoring your messages because they find it monotonous. Well, in such a scenario, you need to approach your customers with the right marketing messages and you will need to implement SMS marketing in your campaigns.

Mobile device interactions between customers and enterprises are getting more and more common. They frequently expect to be able to text or contact businesses. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that more than half of American retailers planned to expand their digital marketing investment in texting and SMS even back in January 2020, before COVID-19 upended how businesses connect with their customers.

Furthermore, 80% of customer support firms will switch from using native apps to SMS and messaging by 2025, according to Gartner.

The most useful SMS messages that companies send, in the eyes of their customers, are those related to their services. Discounts on products or services don’t rank as highly in terms of perceived value as appointment reminders, delivery updates, and booking confirmations do.

What is SMS marketing?

SMS Marketing is the practice of using text messages for marketing purposes to send transactional or promotional campaigns. The messages are intended to inform those who have agreed to receive text messages from your company about time-sensitive deals, updates, and alerts.

Before we learn how to text using SMS, let’s fully grasp how and why SMS marketing works. SMS marketing is increasingly becoming the norm.

According to the definition of SMS marketing, which stands for short message service marketing, this marketing strategy employs text messages to inform clients about offers, updates, and reminders in addition to other things. Between a customer and a staff person, there is one-on-one communication.

An automated text message conveys the message and prompts the user to respond. Customers who have chosen to receive texts from your business are frequently the only ones to receive them.

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Does SMS marketing work and what are its benefits?

‍With a 98% read rate, 95% of text messages are read within the first three minutes.  It is an effective marketing technique because of many reasons that we will discuss to understand its efficacy. Let’s examine a few of the major advantages of text message marketing given its various advantages:

1. Consumers’ preferred mode of communication

Your clients WANT you to text them! 75% of consumers are comfortable with brands sending them SMS messages. Furthermore, 89% of customers said they would rather communicate with organizations by text or email than by phone.

This is logical. Text messages don’t bother anyone. They have the option to skim it now (or later), dismiss it, delete it, respond to it, choose not to participate in it, or refer to it later. It is the best approach for a company to interact with me as a customer.

2. The read rate is high:

An astounding 98% of SMS texts are read. To put it simply, they will see it if you hit “send.”

This does not imply that you are free to send whatever, whenever you please. Because of this, SMS is particularly effective at transmitting important information.

Like with any marketing communication channel, sending too many messages too frequently may turn off your audience, who will probably choose not to receive your SMS messages.

The customer will still want to receive your communications once you follow proper texting protocol, though.

3. Cost-effective and fast

Increasing sales is something you must do. For many small businesses, this entails pouring money into thousands of mailers that the receivers may or may not view.

What if you could instantly share these exclusive offers, discounts, and flash sales with all of your existing and former customers? You could think that since you are already using emails to accomplish this, you would guarantee that each buyer sees your exclusive offer.

Unlike social media or email marketing, you don’t need to create any images to match with your information. You don’t have to write a lot in text messages because SMS has a character restriction. They may be produced and sent quickly and easily.

4. Predominance of Smartphones

In 2021, 85% of US adults will own a smartphone, making SMS an effective method for immediately contacting clients. You can increase online engagement with your company by inserting a link in this paragraph.

5. Shuts down the email marketing cycle

Despite the fact that the implementation of their strategies is very similar for both SMS and email marketing, they function best together.

As was already noted, SMS can be used to provide immediate notifications, whereas email is better suited for longer-form information like a newsletter with helpful links.

6. Outstanding for emerging markets

SMS is a much better way to share information if your company is seeking to operate in nations where data is expensive and wi-fi is less common.

7. High Open Rate:

If you want people to open your messages, sending them by text is the most effective way to get them to do so. Marketing texts are opened a whopping 98% of the time, which is about as close as you can get to a full 100%. By comparison, a study by Mailchimp found that the average open rate for a marketing email is 21.3%.

To Start with SMS marketing:

You already know that SMS marketing is an effective tactic, but to make the most of it you have to follow the best SMS practices.

1. Your customers should opt in for SMS service

You most likely already obtain consumers’ phone numbers. That does not imply that you should begin messaging them in bulk. SMS text marketing necessitates a distinct opt-in, much like email marketing. On your website or other online platforms, you might ask visitors to consent to receiving text messages from you. You should first receive an SMS from them confirming that they actually wish to subscribe before you send anything.

One method of doing this is to send a single SMS which should be one message per day thanking the recipient for signing up, and asking them to confirm their opt-in by answering a straightforward Yes or No. Avoid texting them again if they don’t reply. Additionally, it goes without saying that you shouldn’t text them again if they reply “No.”

2. Adhere to business timings

People almost instantly open text messages, as opposed to email and social media, which are only seldom reviewed. Although this is excellent for urgent communications, you shouldn’t abuse this ability by bothering contacts at unusual times of the day.

Who can be tempted to use a voucher that you just found after waking up at two in the morning on a Wednesday? No one would like it and it would actually irritate the person receiving the SMS.

Even some nations have rules on when it’s acceptable to transmit text-based advertisements. For example, in France there should be no SMS marketing on Sundays, holidays, or anyday after 10 PM.

3. Include SMS customer service:

SMS customer service is a fantastic idea to include if you’re planning to use text message marketing. When clients perceive genuine value in the messages you provide, they are more likely to continue to subscribe to SMS messaging.

Naturally, SMS customer service is more than just these automated confirmations or reminders. Additionally, it entails enabling one-on-one text messaging so that clients can speak with customer service agents directly.

4. There should be a way to opt out:

All marketing communications should adhere to this standard practice, which is frequently mandated by law. However, it’s crucial for a more intrusive means like SMS. It is more likely to result in customer loss than a boost in sales when you SMS someone repeatedly who doesn’t want to hear from you.

Even transactional messages like shipping updates or appointment reminders should have a way for recipients to unsubscribe. Not everyone desires to get this kind of information by SMS.

5. The message should contain the company name and a CTA

Most service providers use short codes to send bulk SMS messages, so your contacts won’t even recognize them as coming from you. Due to this, you must let your contacts know who is really sending the message. Customers should know where to go if you send them a promotional voucher, don’t you think?

A call to action, also known as a CTA, should always be included to encourage readers to take the next step, just like in other marketing communications. What do you want them to do like check out your website, come to a gathering and request that they increase click-through rates.

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SMS Marketing Platforms that can help your business:

‍It can be difficult to decide which SMS marketing automation platform is ideal. Numerous services for brands are advertised by all companies that provide SMS capabilities, but not all of them are made equal. The best text marketing platform should be chosen for their use case, just like with the launch of any new, strategic marketing channel.

A platform’s features allow for the creation of SMS campaigns at scale, which is known as SMS marketing automation or text message automation for enterprises. This can include analytics driven by artificial intelligence, personalisation, segmentation, A/B testing, and more. Therefore, there are various SMS marketing platforms with useful features that can aid you in finishing the task.

1. Specialized tools or outdated platform technologies, such as Salesforce:

Even huge brands frequently find it prohibitively expensive and labor-intensive to maintain complex or outdated solutions. For your marketing team, using them is challenging and complex, which slows down the execution of campaigns. They take months to implement, delaying crucial launches like the BFCM, for example.

Because these solutions function slowly and have a little amount of data storage and computational power, your marketer’s day will be longer. Of course, maintaining and customizing them costs money.

2. Brands frequently employ point text messaging systems like Attentive or Postscript

Brands frequently employ point text messaging systems like Attentive or Postscript  offer few integrations, very rudimentary data collection, and cross-channel reporting capabilities. They also do not link to important parts of your marketing funnel.

Worse still, these tools overstate the impact they have on your financial situation, much like Facebook advertisements did before Apple’s iOS upgrade, which overstated the revenue from adverts.

This caused many companies to overinvest in performance marketing, and perhaps the entire direct-to-consumer sector as a whole. In the wake of the privacy-first shift, many of those firms have had to adjust their marketing efforts to a balance between sponsored and owned marketing.

3. Sendinblue – For planning and implementing marketing campaigns

Businesses can create and carry out SMS-based marketing campaigns that target mobile devices using SMS marketing software, also known as commercial text messaging software (Short Message Service). By sending timely, customized messages to clients’ mobile devices, this kind of software aids firms in boosting brand loyalty and engagement.

Marketing teams use permission-based subscribe links in campaign messages to target potential customers, and they use digital promotions like polls, vouchers, surveys, and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) to reach out to customers.

Users may send a lot of promotional text messages with bulk messaging by doing so with just one click, which makes it simple and quick for businesses to add lots of new subscribers. Teams in sales and customer support can use SMS to communicate with customers and prospects in a two-way text format.

However, some SMS marketing tools are offered as a part of marketing automation or email marketing software, which interface with other company systems most frequently through an API. Push notification software or mobile marketing software may be used by businesses wishing to use new features for targeting mobile devices.

4. Klaviyo – Includes SMS and Email under one roof

You can start sending text message campaigns and automations through Klaviyo SMS tool for free up to 50 profiles and if you want to send more, then you need to take the SMS pricing system and pay for the services. This tool was launched in 2012.

It targets small, medium and large businesses that can take advantage of Klaviyo’s ease of use and powerful SMS features. Klaviyo has more than 100,00 customers globally and this platform is one of the most popular e-commerce software after Shopify. The only platform that combines SMS and email functionality under one roof is Klaviyo. Both the UK and Australia offer SMS services.

The features of this platform include simple setup,  SMS and email are included in multi-channel automations as part of the same workflow. There is an uncharged toll-free number,  SMS two-way dialogue,  SMS approval at the register,  SMS campaign split testing, etc.  Brands using Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Wix, or bespoke platforms can access ecommerce expertise and use cases that have already been developed via APIs.

Automatic permission management, two-click text personalisation, multi-step sign-up forms, best-in-class deliverability and text compliance, email text messaging revenue, and ROI tracking. The platform’s email and SMS segmentation are best in class.

5. ClickSend

Without downloading any proprietary software, businesses may use ClickSend to send thousands of text messages from anywhere in the world. Through their service provider or even their email accounts, the software enables customers to send mass messages.

Users can switch between text, email, fax, and even non-SMS platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp while managing various digital marketing campaigns using a cloud-based interface. Although ClickSend is now a lot more versatile service thanks to these possibilities, it’s probably best left to seasoned marketers and programmers.

To make its services interoperable with other apps and programs, ClickSend offers APIs that enable integrations. With the help of cClickSend, numerous marketing firms and enterprises can easily complete duties like general reminders, event management, and customer support.

Pricing schedule: the first 2,000 messages are priced at $0.0530 each.

6. Salesmsg

Salesmsg is a great choice for small firms located in the US or Canada, but it hasn’t been made available everywhere in the world.

Among the services on our list, the software has the most straightforward user interface. Conversations, Contacts, Broadcasts, and Triggers are the only four tabs on the sidebar. Its integration with other apps is where most of its strength resides. Create a local number is a requirement after signing up.

You can give a different phone number to each team member and use this as the number from which all of your texts will appear to originate. Additionally, you can activate call forwarding, which will route any calls received from clients to both your personal and professional phones in the event that they text your SMS number. The best part is that users can utilize Zapier to link Salesmsg’s capabilities with tens of thousands of other apps.

Small companies can manage their outreach more conveniently as a result of automation. Below are the price plans:

Plan Pro: $35 per month

Plan Premium: $300 per month

Customized Pricing: Custom Plan

7. Twilio:

Among the companies on our list, Twilio is without a doubt the most well-known and largest. With more than $1.13 billion in revenue in 2020, it is a publicly traded firm. However, given that it’s mostly intended for businesses and developers, we’ve placed them a little lower on this list.

The program hangs its hat on its ability to construct whatever SMS capabilities a business requires using its API functionality. It can send SMS notifications, warnings, and reminders using its Programmable Messaging API. With the help of its Conversations API, businesses may also establish two-way communication.

Developers can start sending SMS messages by using a small amount of code and open-source code examples. Don’t worry if you lack programming skills; Twilio will inquire about your degree of experience before customizing the UI.

Additionally, Twilio offers a helpful analysis suite that includes tools for monitoring the number of phone calls made as part of advertising campaigns. Through text message notifications, sales representatives can also be immediately informed of new leads.

Pricing structure: Compared to the other apps on our list, Twilio has a somewhat different pricing structure because it is more of a platform than an app. Although there is an additional $0.005/message carrier fee on messages you send, text messages start at $0.0075/message sent and received. Dedicated phone numbers just start at $1 per month.

Growth of SMS Marketing Platform and Statistics :

The SMS Marketing Software Market was estimated to be worth USD 5768.72 Million in 2021 and is anticipated to grow to USD 26292.28 Million by 2030, expanding at a CAGR of 23.08% from 2022 to 2030.

The SMS Marketing Software Market is expanding rapidly, which may be ascribed to rising demand for marketing automation software, an increase in online buying, and the affordability of cloud-based solutions. Additionally, SMS marketing software aids organizations in creating and managing subscriber lists, sending bulk text campaigns, and automating client engagement.

These features, combined with the always rising need for marketing automation software, are driving the growth of the SMS marketing software market. Additionally, it is anticipated that a rise in online purchasing habits and a rapid uptake of cloud-based solutions due to their low cost will fuel the market’s expansion.

• Deployment Model: SMS marketing software is either cloud based or premise based. During the forecast period, cloud-based is expected to grow at the greatest long-term CAGR of 21.19%, accounting for the largest market share in 2020. Software as a Service (SaaS) tools that are cloud-based let users access numerous applications or data online.
• SMS Marketing market, Marketing Campaigns:The Occasions, Special Offers, Celebrations, and Others categories make up the Global SMS Marketing Software Market’s Marketing Campaigns segmentation. The segment with the biggest market share in 2020 was Special Offers, which is anticipated to expand at a long-term CAGR of 21.16% throughout the forecast period.
• SMS marketing market as per industry vertical: The BFSI, Transportation, Telecom & IT, Retail, Healthcare, and Others market segments are based on Industry Vertical. Retail held the greatest market share in 2020, and it is anticipated that it will continue to expand at a long-term CAGR of 19.11% over the coming years.

SMS marketing frequently aids the retail industry by increasing product sales. Although it creates a database for the retail sector and lowers cart abandonment rates. The success of a business depends on their ability to communicate effectively, from register procedures to resolving consumer complaints.

Conclusion: It is clear that the SMS marketing market has a great potential today and SMS marketing can be an effective technique that can help companies build their revenue, generate sales and win the interest of prospects.

According to studies, SMS messages have a response rate that is 209% higher than that of phone calls, emails, and other well-known marketing mediums. Additionally, this marketing strategy can be quite effective in contacting one’s target market because of the substantial growth in mobile users.

SMS marketing can work for your business as well. Try implementing the best SMS practices and choose the right tool to make the most of this effective marketing tactic.